{Book Review} The Soul of a New Machine

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder

Way back in 1981, I identified strongly with Tracy Kidder’s description of the intensity of non-stop, passionate, 24×7 product development. The hacker culture, harnessed to corporate product development, predates the many Silicon Valley stories of Netscape or today’s Google. Having gone through a “burn out” process in developing Coherent, this book gave me great perspective that has stuck with me to this day.